Doctors reveal incredible little-known stories of miraculous recoveries

Their stories range from people surviving multiple gun shot wounds to the head to patients suffering from serious health conditions for years undetected

Users responded to a Reddit feed asking for the best 'how the hell are you even alive right now' stories (Corbis)

Doctors, paramedics and patients have revealed stories of the incredible recoveries they have witnessed in the emergency room - and even ones they have been through themselves.

Posting anonymously to a Reddit feed asking for the best “how the hell are you even alive right now” stories, countless little-known tales of survival against the odds have been described.

From patients who were found alive after being shot multiple times in the head, to those who endured serious heart conditions for years without noticing, the thread features amazing stories of seemingly immortal feats.

One user, who had been involved in the Emergency Medical Service, said: “One day we came up on an accident on the highway involving a motor cyclist and a minivan, usually that is not good, at all...it's always a mess.

“We get there and find out he hit the minivan at 80 MPH while it was stopped on the side of the road and flew through the back window, through to the front and survived without a scratch on him, no broken bone no AMS (altered mental status aka blunt head trauma).

“He even got himself out the van and asked if the people inside were okay. He was wearing a helmet and I think that saved his life.”

Here is a selection of some of the others:

A patient recounted his own miraculous survival after suffering, unknowingly, from a rare and dangerous heart condition:

“I basically was born with a congenital birth defect which has an extremely high mortality rate. Like 1 in 120,000,000 of it happening and about 95 per cent to 99 per cent chance of dying. Not only did I survive it for 20 years, I played lacrosse for 4 years.

“Now the issue was that I was missing a major blood vessel on my heart that is required to pump blood. My body compensated in such an extreme way that the blood vessel on the right side of the heart went down and around the heart and attached itself to aorta. My heart was basically circulating heart around itself and the rest of my body didn't get enough blood.

“So how it was found out? Blew my nose and had a full on heart attack.

“Surgeons repeatedly stated and asked ‘How was I alive’ and ‘You played lacrosse for 4 years’. Also, the main surgeon stated that anyone with this condition usually dies at birth. They only know of the condition from autopsies.”

One anesthesiologist writes:

"We had a fine young gentleman who was shot while diving away from a gang-related bullet. A single bullet hit is right subclavian vein, went through his right lung, right diaphragm, liver, many loops of bowel, hit both his left Iliac artery and vein, and lodged in his sacrum. He coded (heart stopped, no blood pressure) in the ED, got an ED thoracotomy, internal cardiac massage, and got his heart restarted. 200+ units of blood product and 10 hours of emergent surgery later, he made it to the ICU. Before that night, I had never seen someone survive after an ED thoracotomy and had never given someone that much blood. He walked out of the f'ing hospital..."

A doctor who has worked in critical care and trauma wards for over a decade shared one of his most memorable stories:

“I looked after this young guy who stumbled onto oncoming high speed traffic drunk and got hit. We took him urgently to theatre and started resuscitating him while he got his laparotomy. He ended up getting 69 LITRES (not units!) of blood products back in the one operation. We completely depleted the states' blood stores and we had to call in supplies from the next state. He had torn both his abdominal aorta and inferior vena cava. Still not sure how, but he made it out of hospital.”

Another doctor working in a trauma surgery in the US said:

“Got a notification about a man who was shot three times in the head. He comes in, literally one eye hanging out of the socket, blood everywhere, and he's slumped forward. Apparently he was shot in the temple, exited out his right eye socket, in the nose exited from the roof of the mouth, and in the cheek one with exit from the side of the head. At this point I'm thinking they just brought him in so we can pronounce him in the ER because he looked dead. I go to examine him and tilt his head back, and he's says ‘Yoooo be gentle!’ I jump back and scream like a little boy, as did everyone in the room. Literally the bullets missed his brain in every single shot.”

And another writes:

"It was near 2am, in quiet shift. A guy walks in the ER and asks for a doctor, with his left hand at his forehead. I present myself, asking what I could do for him. "I just got shot in the head", he says, releasing his hand and showing the bullet entrance. He was immediately taken to surgery, and turned out ok. The (removed) bullet was stuck in his skull."